Chowder (4/12/11)

On the stove
Onions melt to translucence
And potatoes bubble in bacon fat

Across the kitchen
An uneducated hand
Clasps a clam
In its palm
Hovering above a bowl

The hand's accomplice
Holds a short knife
And pushes the blunt edge
Into the gaper's mouth

The blade presses
And twists
To open the shell

Which snaps
And a broken piece
Falls into the bowl
Filled with clam juice

Still struggling
To extricate the gold
Meat from the shell
The hand presses
And twists

The thumb slips
And a crimson blossom
Grows on its tip
Stinging from the sea's salt

"Night" Reflection

Arbeit mach frei
Working
(to death)
Will set
you(r soul)
Free

Empty yourself
Until you resemble
A ring without a finger
Until your atoms separate
Like smoke in the wind

Lose yourself,
As the world has lost you,
In a mass of loose-skinned,
Skeletal spectres.

Lose yourself
As you acquiesce
To being a felt star,
A number,
A scapegoat.

Live on
As a smudge
Of charcoal -
The only product
Of this factory.

Glossophobia

I have lost more words than I have yet found;
Lexicons that shift like tectonic plates
Consuming swathes of text as magma sates,
Buried in heat like echoes underground.

Fickle attentions savagely forget
That which falls outside the memories reach:
A wave that crashes with no sight of beach
Or a fish cut in twain by the mind's net.

What it is I hope to say slips like smoke
Twixt clumsy fingertips that hope to grasp,
But fumbles as one would with jewelry clasp-
A wicked confusion that begs not be spoke.

Yet speaking would be the death of ache,
But, lacking proper language, should one speak?

With/out

Without you
I am merely
A cloud
A loose
Accumulation of dew
At the whim
Of wind
Likely to be lost

But with you
I am anchored
A kite
Colorful
Dancing on the wind

Your presence gives
Each of my movements
meaning
Just as your presence
Gives my life light.

The Shelf

You have placed me
On a shelf in your heart

But somehow
That shelf is beyond
Your arm's length.

Sowing

I have always thought
That love  grows
 from the garden of friendship

In my heart the soil is fertile
And -whether you like it or not -
You've spread your seeds
And smoothed the dirt

In my heart the seeds
Have broken and pushed out
Into the light

But I have tossed my seeds
at your heart
And without my watch
I fear the birds have stripped
The ground of my prospect

Though my fields are verdant
And you may luxuriate upon them
I only want to run in your pasture
But it is still just barren dirt for me. 

Heart of Rock and Roll

More often than not
I know what to say
But for some reason
When it comes to you
Words allude me.

I can see your beauty
I observe both the delicacy
And the brashness
Of your movements
Your words, your thoughts

But I fail to pour
These observations
into a vessel
Where it can ferment into poetry.

But watching you
keep the beat
Along with the band
With your hand on your heart
I wish I made music
You could love like that.